by John Masters
John whistled softly through his teeth. Reinhart’s face was red, his eyes shining; partly the boilermakers, of course; but what he said made sense. He himself was fed up with the Indian Service; but he had fallen in love with the land, and the people; and Stella was improving, slowly but surely, clawing up from her world of hallucination to the hard pure reality of this country, these people.
Reinhart said, ‘Work on the legislatures of New Mexico and Arizona … and on Congress too … to protect the real Indian artists against white imitators. No one yet knows the difference in New York, and your people will suffer … because the imitation stuff won’t feel good, it won’t last, and a lot of it won’t even be genuine silver or turquoise … and you’ll be blamed.’
John said, ‘I’ll resign from the Service right away.’
Reinhart said, ‘Now you’re talking! Send your father a wire. But don’t get Hughes mad. He could stop you buying Hurford’s … or at least see that you were never allowed on to the reservation to run it. Now he probably thinks you just need some moulding to become a good bureaucrat.’
‘I’m not so sure,’ John said. ‘Anyway, I think Dad has enough clout in Washington to fix anything with the USIS, if he agrees with me. But if I’m fed up with the Service he’ll want me to go back to Fairfax, Gottlieb in New York.’
Reinhart was on another boilermaker; but he became calmer, and spoke more deliberately – ‘Get him to come out here. Show him what you want to do for them … If he’s worth anything, if he can understand men, he’ll see.’
John was away in the western end of the reservation, and would not return for three nights. Mary Begay was eighteen, dark-skinned, her hair braided, full-breasted. She was distantly related to Chee Shush Benally, John’s dead friend. She usually left the house at four o’clock to walk three miles across the foothills to the hogan of another relative, west of Fort Defiance, where she had lived since starting to work for Stella and John. But this day she said, ‘Missis … you are alone with Ké’ – this was the Navajo word for ‘peace’ and also Peace’s Navajo name … She had little English, but her message came through, in Navajo words, some English, signs. Stella wanted to stop using the heroin. She knew of it. Who could miss the needles, the marks of them? She had thought of taking the missis to a sing … that might be good later, when she knew more … Now, she should take peyote, alone, thinking of what she wanted to be. She held out her hand, open.
Stella knew peyote by sight and name. The button heads of the mescal contained a hallucinatory drug as strong as hashish or bhang. She stared at the buttons now, without fear, yet she had lived in terror of all drugs, even heroin, since she had become an addict. She asked, ‘Will I … have to have it always?’
Mary said, ‘As you wish.’
It was dark outside, a wind blowing in from the mountains, stars brightening as the darkness grew more dense, closing down on the little house at the edge of the government settlement. Mary moved silently about, putting out the oil lanterns by laying a flat cardboard over the glass, so that the flame in each died but left no reek of kerosene. The house was bare, smelling only of dust. Peace was asleep in his crib at the back, and in sudden panic Stella cried, ‘What about Peace? What if he wakes … falls?’
‘Shh! Peace, peace,’ Mary said, almost chanting. Stella pulled back a chair, to sit at the table, but Mary motioned towards the fireplace, and said, ‘Sit on floor …’ Stella sank down, her back to the wall beside the fire. Mary took a few of the buttons and mashed them with her thumb into a bowl she had brought from the kitchen and set on the table, mixing them with a little water. Then, again with thumb and fingers she rolled the small greyish mass into two balls and handed one to Stella. She murmured a long phrase in Navajo, that Stella could not understand, and swallowed the ball she had been holding in the palm of her hand. Stella stared at her own palm in the deep gloom and thought, to sleep, perchance to dream, but in that sleep, what dreams? She swallowed the pill and waited.
Mary Begay sat on the floor opposite her, cross-legged under the long blue velveteen skirt, nothing to support her back, staring wide-eyed at Stella, six feet away. At first Stella did not think she could make out the girl’s features at all, as she seemed to sink slowly back into the darkness. Then gradually her mind, the inside of her head, began to lighten, and as it did Mary’s dark eyes swam up out of blackness to become glowing, then shining lights … the colour of them a deep gold, each two inches across, and wider set than they could have been in real life. Inside, the scattered amorphous lights were taking form … the red cliff escarpment along the railroad tracks by McCartys, in New Mexico. The rocks towered up, and there was a white road, pale, winding down out of the high desert behind, and a single figure riding a white horse, a child on the saddle bow. Herself. And there was water, a house tucked under the cliff … above, vigas sticking out from under the firewall … the whole sheltered by the smooth upward and outward sweep of the cliff. The grey rock was marked with vertical black lines, where water had run down for millions of years … John was running towards her, striding like a stallion, fleet as the wind, running across the desert, against the cliff … She was with him, making love, but a love so powerful their whole bodies were engaged in it, melting into each other, not only their sexual parts, she was floating away, not with orgasm but with the power of her own imagination, going, where? It did not matter. She knew, but was sworn not to tell … on, up, through groves of cottonwoods, a river running shallow by tall cliffs – that was Canyon de Chelly, but infinitely bigger than when she had seen it, and peopled now by ancient people, they whispered to her their name – Anasazi, Anasazi, Anasazi … words hovered over her, Shongopovi, Betatakin, Oraibi, Biklabito … and with each name, an image, as though the word possessed the power of creating the reality as she repeated it … From a distant star, sweeping slowly past the face of a yellow planet, she heard a woman’s voice cry, ‘The Peyote Road … !’
About two o’clock in the morning she vomited and went to bed, while Mary curled up on the floor of the passage outside Peace’s room. The two women had said nothing to each other, as Stella sank slowly down to the consciousness she had called being awake, before; and Mary’s eyes had burned bright again, and dimmed to a glowing, and from that to the nondescript darkness of the night; but Stella could see everything much more clearly now than she had in the day.
In the morning she took out her needle and syringe and heroin, and stared at them a long time, wondering. Then she put them back in the medicine cupboard and locked the door. But at midday she was sweating and her mouth was dry and she went to the bathroom again, unlocked the cabinet, and did what she had to do. Not yet, not yet.
They were riding on three Navajo ponies, all three buckskins, two stallions and a mare, followed by Mary Begay on a fourth, the baby Peace rested in front of her, enfolded in her blanket as well as supported by her arm. The Benallys had brought the horses to the road, near Tocito, and waited a day, two days, perhaps, for John had not been able to tell them exactly when his father was coming, until he had wired from Chicago. Stella, on John’s right, rode in a strange awareness that she had been here before … not just this road, this dusty cart track, but in this cavalcade, with John and his father, and Mary and Peace. She had taken her day’s dose of heroin a long time ago now, but the effect was not wearing off. Or had it been replaced, without her noticing, by some other equally powerful presence, an Indian presence, first revealed to her in the peyote two weeks ago, since then often manifesting itself without the introduction of the mescal buttons? She had taken them twice since, both times when alone in the house; for now she had no fear of them.
John said, ‘Rein in, Dad.’ He pointed, as the horses dipped their heads and tugged at the reins, searching for grass among the desert scrub and straggling vetch – ‘There’s Hurford’s.’
Stephen stared. He had visited the Navajo reservation several times, but never precisely this part of it. He had heard of Hurford’s Trading Post, which John now wa
nted to buy, but had never seen it. Now, across three miles of slightly rolling desert split by a wide sandy wash, he saw a red cliff wall, climbing up and out from the pale earth 400 feet, its glowing surface marked by the usual black water stripes; and under the overhang, the long line of an adobe building … a corral to the right … two, three hogans to the left … smoke rising from the low chimneys of the main building. He thought there were some wagons and horses drawn up outside the Post, but his eyes were not as good as they used to be. He said, ‘It looks rather like the White House ruin, in Canyon de Chelly.’
Stella cried, ‘That’s the place!’ She passed them, forcing her pony to walk faster. Mary drew up and past too, finally kicking her pony into a canter to catch up.
‘It’s absolutely isolated,’ Stephen said. ‘Fort Defiance would seem like the back of beyond to most Easterners – it would to me if we hadn’t visited this country before … but this, this really is. What on earth is Stella going to do with herself here?’
‘Help me,’ John said briefly. ‘Help the Navajos. We’ll both be up to our ears in work, soon enough … Not right away. The people will take time to trust us. But the Benallys will help to persuade them, simply by coming … by trusting.’
Stephen said, ‘John – listen … Are you sure you’re not hiding away here for something more than to help Stella, and the Navajos? Are you sure you aren’t trying to escape from the war?’
‘The war was a humbling experience, Dad,’ John said briefly.
Stephen said, ‘You are fit … and have fitted yourself … to help many, many more people than one, or even one tribe. You, who have a dozen talents, will be using only two or three.’
The two women ahead were growing smaller as they dropped over the rim where the rock dipped down to the wash, Mary in bright blue and pink, her skirts billowing out on both sides of her horse, Stella harder to see in her wide-brimmed hat, tan shirt, breeches, and riding boots.
John said, ‘I have thought of all those things, Dad. All that you say is true, and I know it. But I am not called to anything else … When I went off to the war, it was because I felt I ought to, but I certainly did not feel called to it, as I think Guy Rowland was. And all those months I was in France, or at Fort Sill, or back in France, I was thinking, what happens after this is over? What do I do then? … I didn’t know … and when at last a call came, it was strong but not very clear … first I knew I had to get Stella away from Europe, from England, her home … break that whole life pattern. And I did. But months later, here, I was wondering what I was really here for … then the second call came: this is what you have to do. It was just a few weeks ago, and the voice was the voice of a drunken old man in a bar in Gallup – Reinhart. He’s going to come and work for us here – teaching us how to value pawn, rugs, silverwork, turquoise, sand paintings … But this is it, Dad. I know that.’
Stephen said, ‘For now, then, I’ll have to accept it. And do. You can count on me for whatever financial and other help that I can give.’
They had been settled into the Trading Post, now called Merritt’s, for six days. Stella was alone, for John had gone to the Hopi territory to buy their silverwork. Autumnal thunder crashed against the face of the cliff and reverberated through its solid rock, shaking the vigas in the ceiling and sending trickles of dust to fall through the latillas, the pale aspen boughs that were laid herringbone fashion between the vigas. Stella lay awake, shaken by the thunder, dazzled by the flashes of lightning that painted the whitewashed adobe walls with sudden brilliance. It was colder, much colder than when she had gone to bed four hours ago. She had no clock beside her but she knew the hour, exactly. She was uneasy, too, feeling that something had gone amiss in the plan of the universe, and of the land; but as yet she did not know what. She would know soon. She did not need peyote to come to that awareness, it would come to her.
Rain lashed across the windows, on to the earth … she heard it, felt it … it was running down the curved face of the red cliff over her head, too, pouring into the trenches beside the Post, running out on to the plain, some falling in a curtain direct from the outermost point of the curve to the ground ten feet in front of the front wall of the Post.
It was a hurricane, Reinhart had told her – a deep disturbance either in the Gulf of Mexico or off Baja California that carried swirling water-laden winds a thousand miles, far up over the high desert lands, and when they struck the rise of the Arizona and New Mexico mountains, dropped their heavy load of water. Such storms moved slowly, Reinhart said, sometimes taking three days to move off a particular part of the country.
Someone knocked on the door … their bedroom was at the end of the long low building, next to it the living-room, beyond that the big kitchen, through which they must pass to reach the Post. At the other side of the bedroom was a small spare room where Peace slept, with Mary Begay, for the Post was too far from her home for her to return there every night, as she had done in Fort Defiance.
Stella called, ‘Who is it?’
A man’s guttural voice grunted, ‘Hoskie Tsosi.’ She swung out of bed. Hoskie Tsosi was the head of one of the families that lived in the hogans beyond the Post. She struggled into a robe, and when she was ready, said, ‘Come in.’
It was very dark, but she heard the door open and sensed the silent passage of his moccasined feet across the rugs; then she heard the dripping of water. He said, ‘Boy come … sister having baby … baby not come out.’
‘Where?’ Stella asked. Behind her she heard the other door open and heard Mary say, ‘Where live woman?’
The man answered quickly in Navajo and Mary turned to Stella – ‘It is Ason Atsiddy. Their hogan is by the Turkey Spring … nine miles, ten miles. Two hours on horse.’
‘What can I do?’ Stella cried. ‘I’m not a doctor. Have they no midwife? Or experienced women?’
Mary and the man were talking rapidly as Stella cried out, and between their staccato sentences Mary threw out words and phrases to her … ‘No woman there, only children … eldest boy came here.’
‘What about the doctor at the Fort?’ she cried. ‘Can’t you get him?’
‘No time …’
‘But … I don’t know what it is … is it something to do with the baby? Has she got a stomach illness?’
‘Don’t know … need help.’
A tremendous flash of lightning lit the room brighter than day and she saw their faces, the dark brown turned to pale green. She said, ‘I will dress. Bring horses. The boy will return with me as a guide. And wake Mr Reinhart.’
Tsosi said, ‘He drunk. No good.’
‘You come with me then.’
Mary said, ‘He will go with you. I stay with Peace.’
Tsosi went out towards the Post and Stella, lighting a lamp, dressed hurriedly. She had thought her fingers would be trembling, her whole body shaking, but they did not. In five minutes she was ready, dressed in riding clothes, a heavy poncho over all, in her coat pocket the first-aid box they kept in the Post, inherited from Hurford.
The horses were already saddled, waiting outside the Post door, the curtain of water from the cliff falling beyond them, all round a sea of water appearing and disappearing with the lightning. Stella took the reins and swung up into the saddle. The boy led off, she followed, then Tsosi. Every few seconds the lightning delineated the valley, the wash ahead, the distant rocks. They went up the near side of the wash for ten minutes. By then she was soaked through the poncho, and the temperature was dropping behind the weather front. It was a cold rain that slashed across her face and shoulders, cold air driving through the wet clothes.
The boy reined in his horse and Stella and Tsosi came up beside him. He pointed to the water in the wash and said something in Navajo. Stella shouted, ‘What?’
Tsosi said, ‘He says, cross.’
Stella hitched down more firmly in the saddle. The water was deep, how deep the lightning did not tell her, but it was running now from bank to bank, 300 yards, which she had only
known as so much sand, twisted roots of greasewood, and sage. But the banks were three to four feet high, and the wash was up to them, and in places over. She did not know the hogan they were going to, but it must be on the other bank; and they were crossing here rather than wait, when two more hours’ rain would have swollen the river even higher.
They entered the water together, all three horses side by side. The ponies stepped carefully, bracing their legs against the rush of the water, dirty brown, swirling past in the lightning … a whole sage bush raced by … here something dead, a cow, perhaps, from higher up, or a sheep – she could not tell. Her pony stumbled and Tsosi’s hand reached out at once, gripping the reins by the head as he leaned over and spoke to it in Navajo – ’Steady! Do not be afraid … Careful!’
The water was forcing against her boots … trickling in over the top of the left one, on the upstream side. To her right the boy suddenly vanished into the darkness. A flash of lightning showed him momentarily, twenty yards downstream, the horse fallen sideways, his face white, mouth open, teeth bared … then darkness – ‘Can’t we …?’ Stella cried.
Tsosi shouted – ‘On!’
Pace by pace, the ponies crabbing diagonally across the flood, as they were unable to keep their balance while walking directly across, they reached the farther bank, scrambled up out of the bed of the wash, and turned again westward. The lightning was becoming less frequent, but the rain fell just as hard, and even colder. Stella again wondered, why am I not strangled by fear, paralysed by cold? She knew, but could not explain.
They struggled on in the rain, the ground under the horses’ hoofs now a quagmire that gripped them, and held them, only to release grudgingly, hurling mud into their faces. Near dawn, they came at last to the place where the woman lay.